Venezuelan Women Lose Access to Contraception, and Control of Their Lives
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Photographs by Meridith Kohut
Feb. 20, 2021
Affordable birth control has disappeared, pushing many women into unplanned pregnancies at a time when they can barely feed the children they already have.
SAN DIEGO DE LOS ALTOS, Venezuela The moment Johanna Guzmán, 25, discovered she was going to have her sixth child she began to sob, crushed by the idea of bringing another life into a nation in such decay.
For years, as Venezuela spiraled deeper into an economic crisis, she and her husband had scoured clinics and pharmacies for any kind of birth control, usually in vain. They had a third child. A fourth. A fifth.